'One home, one bin' plan to boost recycling

READING is set to get a ‘one home, one bin' rubbish limit in a move to boost recycling.

The proposed get-tough scheme will mean borough binmen refusing to take away any more than one wheelie bin of trash a week, leaving the rest behind.

But households will be given extra burgundy bins to fill with plastic, cans, paper and cardboard for recycling, in a bid to save central Berkshire's landfill space - which is set to run out in five years.

One out of every eight homes currently has two of the 240-litre wheelie bins and Reading's binmen collect around 940 tonnes of trash a week,

borough council papers show.

A kerbside recycling scheme covers around 40,000 properties, with 60 tonnes collected, but that is less than seven per cent and lags well behind neighbouring areas.

Last week the Government announced a £37 million grant to help Reading, Wokingham and Bracknell councils build a new state of the art waste facility to increase recycling.

A council report said: "The waste disposal element could be limited to one ‘black bin' per household (with allowance for exceptional circumstances).

"No additional bins or bags would be offered or collected. This is already done in other authorities such as Tameside."

The report says the scheme can only be run in areas where the council operates kerbside recycling.

Councillor Tony Jones admitted there could be some resistance to any limits on normal rubbish, but said householders will be able to throw away the same amount of trash by separating out recyclable materials.

He said: "We have got to try to persuade people to recognise it is a good thing. Sometimes that can be done by carrot and sometimes by stick. It is an important issue. We need to discuss and consult upon it and it should be done in the context of offering another wheelie bin that people can put their recyclable waste in."

Cllr Jones said the borough's fledging kerbside recycling scheme had been a success, although the 55-litre burgundy bins were proving too small.

Council papers show many homeowners are putting out extra bins of plastics, paper and cans and Cllr Jones said: "People are now getting frustrated because they want to do more.

"We are trying to come up with something that does raise the levels of recycling, which is relatively low.

"We are not expecting people's volume to change. If they will help sort it for us collectively by separating out their rubbish at home, we can make a great deal of progress."

Reading's kerbside recycling scheme does not take in glass currently. Wokingham district far exceeds Reading's total, with 17 per cent of trash recycled. There is no date set for the limit to come in yet.